ATO: Weathersby on Firefox OS and Clark on Open Source Hardware

Christine Hall

The All Things Open conference is off and running!

If there was any doubt that Raleigh would be the perfect place to hold a major tech conference, an open source conference at that, those doubts are now laid to rest. In spite of a super large room, this morning’s keynote addresses, by Andy Hunt and Whurley, were presented to a standing room only crowd. The line lor lunch, provided free with admission, was…well, let’s just say something about the mouth of a gift horse, if you catch my drift.

The first presentation I attended this morning was also SRO, although in a much smaller room. Jason Weathersby, an “evangelist” for Mozilla spent his forty-five minutes talking about HTML 5, specifically its use in the mobile Firefox OS. Very clearly and without talking over my not-so-bright head, he talked about the app development environment for the mobile OS. Firefox OS apps pretty much are HTML 5, with a few identifiers added-on as prompts for the OS. Within a few days I’ll be offering a more complete look at Mr. Weathersby’s presentation.

I was also able to catch Christopher Clark’s presentation on Open Source Hardware. Clark works for Sparkfun Electronics, a company that wrote much of the book, metaphorically speaking, on Open Source Hardware.

Actually, who knew hardware could be so much fun?

I went into this one expecting to be a little bored. In fact, just the opposite was true. Clark offered-up a fascinating lecture on the ins and outs of Open Source Hardware, which is a new and quickly growing area in computer technology. Again, I’ll be turning-in a more detailed report on the ideas expressed by Clark, probably early next week. Stay tuned…

I’m only going to be attending one more presentation this afternoon, if I can find a seat, that is. I’m hoping to find a place in the room where Leigh Heyman, often called Obama’s “open source guru,” will give his presentation, “We the People: Open Source, Open Data.” I have a feeling I need to get to that one early or I’ll be left out in the hall.

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Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux